


when it shows

by runawayballista



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-17
Updated: 2012-12-17
Packaged: 2017-11-21 09:24:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/596113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/runawayballista/pseuds/runawayballista
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's never seen fear on her face before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when it shows

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote some Maine/Carolina for Larissa! This was scribbled out at the end of a night and was unproofed/unbetaed but it turned out pretty okay despite that.

He’s never seen fear on her face before.

He’s heard it in her voice before, through the rough filter of her comm radio, barely held back and dressed up as terse concern; he’s heard it late at night when she’s tired, when her guard is down and it seeps through the splintered cracks in her voice when no one is around to hear it but her mute observer. He doesn’t know if she lets him hear it on purpose, if it’s because she knows he can’t say anything to anybody else or that he  _won’t_ , or if it’s just because she doesn’t think he’s listening.

Maine’s never wanted to think that Carolina would be so careless, but then again, they’d all been proven wrong on that point.

He’s felt it in her touch before. There’s a restrained grace in the way Carolina’s always reached for his hand, quiet and wordless in the dark of the room, her fingers curling around three of his with practiced ease. But the day he finally woke after the anesthetic, his throat all swathed in thick bandages and still breathing through a tube, he’d felt it. He doesn’t think she realized he was really conscious at the time, but he’d felt it. There was nothing sure about the way she’d gripped his hand. Her hand didn’t tremble, didn’t shake. It wasn’t clammy. But she held on too tight. He could feel she was scared.

But Maine’s never seen fear on her face before. Not until now. Even through Sigma’s whispers sounding constantly through his mind, he thinks he can feel the steady, climbing beat of her pulse against her fingers. Her hands scrabble over his arm, and she writhes ceaselessly in his grip, but his fingers only close a little more tightly around her neck. The higher he hoists her, the clearer it is, the fear on her face. He’s never seen her eyes so wide before.

He doesn’t know if the thought originates from Sigma or himself, but for just a moment, Maine wonders if he’s never seen it on her face before because she’s never been afraid of him.

He can feel his gut twist, his chest seize, because there’s something so deeply personal about this fear that’s never come through in combat or her bunk. He’s never been the object of her fear before. But Sigma’s quiet whispers rush to a roar in his mind, and Carolina’s choked cries fall on deaf ears as the muscles in his arm tighten, coil, and he’s tossed her away like a lifeless rag doll.


End file.
